Air wing back from war

Staff Sgt. Robert Wise takes a run down the firing range in June 2012 as high-explosive rockets are launched from a Huey helicopter in southwestern Afghanistan. NELVIN C. CEPEDA • U-T photos
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Staff Sgt. Robert Wise takes a run down the firing range in June 2012 as high-explosive rockets are launched from a Huey helicopter in southwestern Afghanistan. NELVIN C. CEPEDA • U-T photos
— Nelvin C. Cepeda

Marine aviators, support troops and aircraft headed home at the twilight of the 11-year war. A fledgling regional fleet of Afghan helicopter pilots took flight. And on Sept. 14, insurgents infiltrated the main base, attacked the flight line, killed two Marines — both from the air wing headquartered in San Diego — and set a squadron of AV-8B Harrier jets ablaze.

Maj. Gen. Gregg Sturdevant and his staff from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar experienced those developments during their yearlong tour in command of air combat in southwestern Afghanistan. The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward) returned to San Diego last month.

Sturdevant, 55, assistant wing commander at Miramar, is expected to transfer this summer to the Joint Staff. So is Maj. Gen. Charles “Mark” Gurganus, the Camp Pendleton Marine who oversaw all U.S. and international forces for NATO’s southwestern regional command.

Before beginning his post-deployment leave, Sturdevant spoke with U-T San Diego about expanding the Afghan air force, the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan and accountability for the most costly base attack of the war. Here are excerpts from that conversation:

Q: Over the year you lost about 40 percent of your air combat personnel, including a squadron of heavy lift helicopters. How did the drawdown affect operations?

A: Our Marine Wing Support Squadron, they build expeditionary airfields. All that stuff that went in had to come out. They took the runways apart. We moved almost 5.3 million square feet of (runway) matting while we were there. It got washed, packaged and sent back to the states. That’s a big deal for the Marine Corps, particularly when we’re talking about sequestration and everything else. We are going to have to make do with the equipment we have today for at least the next 10 years.

Q: How did the shift in the summer and fall from counterinsurgency to primarily assisting Afghan security forces affect air combat?

A: It might have been spread out a bit more and we weren’t doing as many large lifts (of personnel assaulting remote areas). But it didn’t change a lot. It was about moving people around the battlefield, doing resupply, medevac escort.

Q: As Afghan national forces took the lead, did they increasingly fill medevac flights?

A: That’s right. That’s one of the challenges the Afghans face. What happens after we leave? The Afghan air force is growing in capability. It’s slow growth, but they are making progress. They have been flying missions with us (in the southwest) since late September. They fly out of Kandahar but come over to Camp Bastion with about a dozen (Mi-17 helicopters).

(They) need to focus on two areas with the Mi-17s, resupply and medevac. They’ve got some medics that are highly trained that you could put in the back of the Mi-17s. They are not where we are at with strip alert (rapid response) type stuff. They will grow into that eventually.

At Bastion in the coming year or so, we are going to make the aviation integration easier. We are going to give them spaces for parking, refueling and planning.

One of the areas we made a lot of progress — a foreign concept to them was maintenance. It was a challenge with generators, with vehicles, with aircraft. They have a long history of flying Russian aircraft. It’s the preventative maintenance we are going to continue to focus on.

Q: The war isn’t expected to end when NATO troops leave. Why is it so important for the Afghans to focus on their medevac flight capability first, because they must fight on after most Americans leave?

A: Right. And how much of a fight there’s going to be, I honestly don’t know. Afghans have got the lead for 80 percent of missions (in the southwest) now. They have come a long way, planning and briefing and leading missions all by themselves. It takes them a little bit longer to get through the planning. They know how to fight.

Q: Because of the drawdown, you had consolidated most of your air wing at Camp Bastion, the British-run base adjoining Camp Leatherneck and Camp Shorabak, by Sept. 14, the night insurgents sneaked aboard. Where were you when the flight line was attacked?

A: I was in my office. A little after 10 p.m., I got a phone call from Lt. Col. Stephen Lightfoot (a Cobra pilot from Camp Pendleton). I could tell by the tone of his voice something was wrong. “I think we are under attack, RPGs, small-arms fire. I got to go,” he said. We hang up and I head to my ops center to see the senior watch officer. He was heading my direction to let me know we were under attack.

That night, we proved every Marine is a rifleman. We did something that every Marine is trained to do, but on the aviation side you don’t really expect to have to. They put down their wrenches and put on their flak jackets, grabbed their helmets and weapons, rushed out and defended the flight line and themselves.

VMM-161, who is from here, had their 240s out of the back of the (Osprey) V-22s, (machine-gunning from the ground.) We had mechanics, admin personnel, all sorts defending the airfield. We responded with Hueys and Cobras. U.S. and British forces swept from one end of the airfield to the other and we didn’t have any blue on blue (friendly fire) situations. There was no moon. It was a pretty dark night. There’s smoke, fire. There’s a lot of noise, a lot of confusion. And you had insurgents inside the fence line wearing U.S. Army uniforms. It really makes you second-guess whether you should pull the trigger, but the Marines and sailors on the flight line that night did a great job.

Q: When did you find out about the two Marines killed in separate rocket-propelled-grenade attacks that night — Lt. Col. Christopher “Otis” Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell?

A: Shortly after they were killed. As soon as that happened, they established a casualty collection point in the center of the flight line. Anybody wounded or killed was taken there so armored ambulances could get them to the hospital.

Raible was getting ready to go to bed. When the attack began, he grabbed one of his majors and one of his enlisted Marines who had a rifle. They got in an SUV, no armor protection or anything, and drove the length of the flight line to get back to his squadron. He was killed leading his Marines in a counterattack. He put one team in place and was heading back into the hangar to get another firing team.

Sgt. Atwell saw the explosion (of Harrier jets) at the far end of the flight line. Both were doing the exact same thing, running to the sound of the gunfire. Sgt. Atwell had alerted his fellow Marines, put on his gear, grabbed his weapon and away he went.

Q: What happened afterward?

A: We never missed a beat. Flight operations continued. We looked hard at the security posture at Bastion. We hardened the flight line. Where the fence line is and where we live and work, it’s pretty close. How do you improve that? You put up HESCOs (barriers), you establish fighting positions and you do battle drills. We took bulldozers and flattened the terrain, so there weren’t a lot of hiding places.

Part of the challenge with Bastion, we are out in the desert but we’ve had a lot of encroachment over the years. We’ve got (housing and farming) compounds right up on the side of the base. It’s tied to illicit drug activity. Our liquid discharge that flows out into the valley makes for pretty good farming, pretty good fertilizer for poppy...

Q: How ironic.

A: Also, scrappers risk their lives to go out and get metal. They try to steal the fence. So you have to figure out, are they scrappers or insurgents? For the most part, they are scrappers. But somebody may be asking them “tell me about your experience at the fence line, did they challenge you?” They continue to probe.

When you start displacing people and going you can’t live here anymore, that really is a hard pill to swallow. It’s a lot easier coming from the local Afghan commander or governor than from Americans or Brits. We are working hard on that. We have made a lot of progress pushing them away from the fence line.

Q: As the air wing commander, it wasn’t your job to prevent insurgents from infiltrating the base. Your Marines were not standing post. Other troops at various levels of command were responsible for securing the perimeter. Has anyone been held accountable for what I would characterize as a catastrophic security failure?

A: You know, that’s a good question. You would have to ask Gen. Gurganus.

Q: He said no one has been fired or removed from command because of the attack.

A: The security piece is a challenge (with such a large base). As you’re drawing down ... actually, it doesn’t even matter whether you’re drawing down. How do you provide sufficient security for that airfield and still project combat power? If you’re not careful, you’re going to be in a situation where all I can do is guard the airfield.

Q: One should expect insurgents to attack the main strategic base in the region. At a minimum, shouldn’t we be able to protect our forces sleeping at night?

A: Yes, I agree with you. Force protection — everyone’s responsible for that. There are people in towers. There are people watching cameras. There are people prepared to respond in the event something were to happen.

But the enemy gets a vote. That attack had been planned for months. They trained to that specific event and then did the execution. And they had some assistance from locals outside the base that allowed them to probably have more access than they normally would have on their own.

Q: If the insurgents had attacked the living areas first instead of the aircraft, there would have been many more casualties. Did that keep you awake at night?

A: Absolutely. We made changes over there as well that would I think prevent that from happening. We were able to replace the aircraft (for combat operations, although the production line is closed). Human lives can’t be replaced. There is not a day that goes by when I don’t think... I was pulling a T-shirt out this morning, an Otis Raible shirt they made for him afterward. I think of both of those two (killed in action) and often ask myself, would I have had the moral courage, the physical courage to do what they did?